The idea of an Easter Market seems counterintuitive. Lent is the time of penance between Carnival and Easter. The idea of a market selling food and flowers during Lent seems odd. But then there is Palm Sunday, a time to stroll with palm fronds. In places where palm trees do not flourish early spring blossoms like forsythia and pussy willow are a good stand-in. So markets selling spring blossoms sprung up around churches in Europe on the Saturday before Palm Sunday and on Palm Sunday itself. Then bakery goods started appearing, and then decorated Easter Eggs, and Easter Wreaths with Eggs and flowers.
Now cities advertise Easter Markets that, from their websites, seem as much a way as attracting early season tourists who don’t make the Christmas Markets as a preparation for the celebration of the resurrection. In 2014 on our way home from work in Georgia, we stopped at three of the most heavily advertised Easter Markets. They were located in our old stomping grounds, two in Vienna and one in Bratislava. When we lived in “Blava” we didn’t see Easter Markets. Now we do. But I will start with Palm Sunday in Warsaw 2013, which is more like what Easter Markets started as. It gave us the idea to check out some of the newer Easter Markets in 2014. What we saw in Warsaw got progressively more, well you’ll see.
Bratislava Easter Fair, or a Spanking for Easter
Altwiener Ostermarkt, Freyung (Old Vienna Easter market at Freyung)
Easter Market at Schonbrunn Palace
I have added one more link to this page. One of the station managers we worked with in Slovakia was also a master metalwork craftsman who made beautiful Easter Eggs with wire.
Bratislava loved the place and fell in love there too